


fool's gold

by windingwoods



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fairytale elements, Minor Character Death, poor usage of in-game mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 13:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11418828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windingwoods/pseuds/windingwoods
Summary: There’s something mysterious about it, how chronicles from many centuries before she was even born all tell the same story of how one day the sun teetered on the verge of the horizon without going down for several hours, setting the whole sky aflame.





	fool's gold

**Author's Note:**

> you: you can't just turn your fave into a bird because it's your aesthetic  
> me, an intellectual: you are like a little baby. watch this

Sunset’s always been Mae’s favorite part of the day. There’s something mysterious about it, how chronicles from many centuries before she was even born all tell the same story of how one day the sun teetered on the verge of the horizon without going down for several hours, setting the whole sky aflame.

According to the chronicles before that day sunset had been but a fleeting part of people’s daily lives, but Mae wouldn’t know; _her_ sunsets always last a few hours and she likes them that way.

What she doesn’t really like is the commotion coming from inside the priory (it’s almost dinner time she realizes idly, a growl of her stomach punctuating the thought), so she takes a few steps into the backyard. If she were to come back inside now she’d only get roped into helping set the tables anyway, which she’d rather leave to Boey and Genny.

There’s a rustling among the leaves that catches her attention, something that looks like the hem of a dress disappearing in between the bushes of wild roses and oleanders Nomah keeps and Mae’s feet move towards it out of instinct.

All sorts of people visit the priory and it could easily be someone in need come to get some supper from them, which means Mae can’t _not_ reach out.

“Heeey, you there,” she calls, rounding a corner with fast steps. Whoever’s trying to hide from her is fast, but Mae knows the garden better. “It’s okay, just come out and―”

The voice dies in her throat as she looks down and finds what looks like a… young woman of sorts, crouched down against one of their orange trees and staring up at Mae in utter bewilderment. Her eyes are wide, almost impossibly so, her nose and jaw made out of sharp edges and her hands balled up in fists. The skin there and on her feet looks somewhat yellowish and hardened but it’s her hair that knocks the breath out of Mae’s lungs, ruffled up and bright red in the sunset light and _feathery._  
As in actual feathers.

“By the _Mother…_ ” Mae breathes out, takes a step back. “What in the heavens are you?”

The look on the tentatively woman goes from lost to displeased, mouth thinning before snapping open. ( _Teeth, she has teeth just like me_ , thinks the part of Mae’s brain that can’t stop looking at the bird nest joke that is the stranger’s hair.)

“That’s not very polite a greeting, Mae,” the woman says, then brings both hands to her mouth with a sharp intake. It’d be almost comical if it weren’t for the fact that this weird, possibly not human lady Mae’s positive she’s never met before seems to know her name for some reason.

“How do you know I’m called Mae?” she tries to ask, but it gets drowned out by the sound of the bell tower going off behind them. The woman’s eyes flicker with horror at that, the last sliver of light from the sun reflecting in them before the sunset is over and the night blankets the world in hues of blue. She tries to say something, or at least that’s how it looks to Mae, but it’s hard to tell when she’s being swarmed by tiny, flickering lights dancing all around her.

Then there’s a flash, bright enough to cloud Mae’s vision with just as many flickering dots, and the woman’s gone, replaced by an actual bird.

“Oh no you _don’t_ ,” is all Mae manages to say, readying herself to catch the bird with her own hands, but the little thing takes off at the same time as she leaps at it; instead, she ends up with her face plastered to the tree’s trunk.

 

.

 

Alm’s hair has started to grey around his temples lately. He gets wrinkles around his eyes whenever he laughs or squints at the sun and his hands feel rougher against Celica’s still velvety cheeks with every touch.

She isn’t sure whether she’s the one leaving him behind, or he is.

The land is prospering though, united under one king and the ghost of a lost, then found, then lost once again princess, too _hideous_ to be shown to the adoring masses. She likes it better that way, her memory can do much more for her people than whatever she’s supposed to be now.

“I can hear you calling yourself names from here,” Alm says, and once again Celica’s heart breaks with how much deeper his voice sounds from the times when they were still but two kids trying to get back their lives from the hands of gods and people alike.

“ _Celica_ ,” Alm says again, echoes of the same urgency that would move his every step years ago still seeping through his calmer tone. It makes her grip on the balcony of Zofia Castle tighten until the… things that used to be her fingers scrape against the marble.

Sometimes she thinks these sunsets are just a big, cruel joke Alm’s played on her; then she remembers who Alm is.

“It’s going to be dark soon,” is all she says. “You should go back.”

She can see him fidget by her side, fingers playing with the wool-rimmed hem of his cape out of habit, and catches the glimmer of the sunlight on the ring on his finger. He wears it over a scar, a ragged one he got from getting his skin cut till the blade bit into bone, and Celica still remembers how the colour had drained from Silque’s face when she’d seen that.

She wonders how Silque’s doing, how many miles she’s walked, if stuck in the gears of the turnwheel she carries by her side there are still fragments of―

Alm’s head comes resting on top of her own as she cries.

 

.

 

“Am I dreaming? I think I might be dreaming.” It takes Mae all her remaining concentration after an afternoon spent in the library poring over books not to turn to where Boey is undoubtedly standing with a face he thinks is smug but is actually as cunning as moldy bread and hurl something at him.

“To think that I’d see Miss Raw Talent herself pick up a book,” he continues, plopping himself down on the seat next to hers and sporting the most obnoxiously reminiscent of his early teens expression Mae’s seen on him since his twentieth birthday.

Under any other circumstances she would tell him what’s going on without a second thought, because Boey has been her best friend since they were kids sneaking to the harbor at night and taking Mae’s parents’ boat out as far as the nearest sea stack just to prove that they could, but even someone like him would probably have a hard time believing her story. Mae herself is still struggling with the vision of the mysterious bird-like woman.

None of the books she’s gone through have been of any use either, which makes the headache she’s got from it twice as annoying.

“Boey, say…” She _might_ be able to get around this if she keeps it vague enough. Maybe. “Do we have stories about bird people? Or people turning into birds?”

Thankfully Boey seems to regard it as a legit question and brings his hand to his chin in that way he thinks makes him look full of wisdom. “Like harpies?”

“Ugh,  _no_ , she was much cuter.”

“She?”

Mae bites back a curse, both because it would make Boey suspicious and because Nomah’s ears can reach about anywhere and in his book Mae’s still not allowed to swear. When she’s sure she’s not going to make Mila’s name in vain as soon as she opens her mouth she takes a deep breath and says, “yeah, well, the picture this merchant showed me the other day! It was reaaal pretty but you can’t see it because he’s already set sail. Shame.”

Boey raises an eyebrow at that, not at all affected by being unable to see the (very nonexisting) picture in question, but doesn’t question it either.

“Right. And how did the girl in the picture look?” he asks instead, and something inside of Mae flutters as round, liquid-like eyes flash in her memory.

“She, uh,” she starts, trying to recall any detail other than that. “She had sharp features? Her hands and feet kinda looked like talons and her hair had this weird feathery texture to it.”

A cursory glance at Boey tells her that she’s not lost him yet, so she continues. “It was a lovely red though, like the watered wine Nomah lets us drink on the holidays, and her eyes were the same.”

“Also feathery?” Boey snorts, Mae elbows him.

“Also _red_ , Gods, you’re so unfunny.”

He simply laughs at her for a while, evidently satisfied with his own joke, then sobers up right before warranting Mae the right to elbow him again. Harder this time.

“You know, that sounds a bit like the lost princess from the legends. Sans the whole bird hybrid thing, of course.”

“Princess Celica?” Mae asks; the name tugs at her, stirs dregs she can’t recognize of something she’s never and always known at the same time. There’s a feeling akin to what she thinks would feel like steel burning inside her chest.

When she looks at him, Boey’s making a face too. “Yeah,” is all he says, “like Princess Celica.”

 

.

 

The day Conrad dies of old age she sings by his window all day long, cursing Jedah, cursing herself, cursing time itself until the sky turns the same colour of Conrad’s eyes that’ll never open again. Celica grieves, because it’s the only thing left to her.

 

.

 

She sits by the same orange tree for the next few days, waiting for the woman until the sun goes down and someone calls out for her, until on the third day she hears a familiar voice coming from above her.

“Just like when we were children, huh,” says the woman, perched on one of the branches like she couldn’t belong anywhere else. She hops down, landing right in front of Mae, and the look on her face feels like she’s stuck somewhere far, far away.

“I believe we’ve never met?” Mae dares to say. “I mean, no offense but I would remember someone… like you.”

The woman smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I guess that’s how it would be for you.”

There’s a guarded sadness in her words, in the way her expression softens when she looks at Mae like she’s lost in the desert and Mae’s an oasis, that doesn’t sit right with Mae. She wants to grab this stranger by the shoulders and shake her until she’s wiped that look off her face. Instead she says, “what’s your name? I’m getting kind of tired of referring to you as Mysterious Bird Lady in my mind.”

“Plus,” she hurries on, because the mysterious bird lady in question just made the face people always make when they really don’t want to answer one of Mae’s questions, “you already know mine, still don’t know how by the way, so it’s only fair that you tell me.”

For a long, quiet second Mae’s sure that she’s screwed up and that the woman’s going to bolt away or turn into a bird again or whatever it is that bird people do when they want to walk out of a thorny conversation. Then the woman smiles the same sad smile as before.

“It’s Celica, pleased to meet you.”

 

.

 

Sonya’s expression looks hardened, like the rocks in the middle of Grieth’s deserted land where Celica would’ve killed her had she headed south. Instead it’s Deen’s blood she’s got on her hands, as well as enough people that she can’t keep a tally for the Mother anymore.

“You stupid―” Sonya’s voice cracks. “Foolish, trusting little girl.”

“He said it was all to bring her back,” Celica says, or hears herself say, reality a blur of colours and sensations she can’t recognize. “I would give my own life for that, this much was nothing.”

“But he _tricked_ you!” Sonya shouts, loud enough to ring above the chorus of everyone else simultaneously yelling their own outrage. There’s a weird silence in the air after that, as Sonya’s resentment burns her like a pyre for everyone to see; no one dares to trample that, not even Saber, who once said Celica reminded him of his sister, or Boey and Genny, who grew up with her, or Conrad, her one and only blood family.

Then Sonya takes Celica’s hand in her own, not faltering for a second as she brings the clawed, yellowed fingers to her lips. “I can’t let him take anyone else away from me,” she murmurs, and her shoulders shake.

 

.

 

Mae dreams of a song she’s never heard before that night; when she wakes up it’s still there, lodged in her memories like the most natural of things. She ends up humming it through the whole day in between chores at home and at the priory, as she goes through more books at the library (Boey’s brought Genny to help with that this time and Mae feels just a tad bit guilty about not telling them the whole story) and as she makes her way to her usual spot in the backyard once she’s done for the day.

She could swear there’s a bird mimicking the melody somewhere, then Celica steps out of the oleander bushes. She’s got a white flower behind her ear and, against any better judgment, Mae thinks it looks lovely on her.

“Oleanders are poisonous,” she says instead, squirms in discomfort as Celica’s face falls a bit.

“I guess I forgot about that.” Celica laughs, quiet and somewhat subdued, as she reaches to disentangle the flower from her hair and lets it fall down at her feet. Mae wishes she could make her a crown of morning glories.

“You were singing with me just now, right?” Mae asks, which makes Celica’s feathers ruffle and stick out all over. It’s cute, but the look on her face isn’t.

Ignoring the wrongness stinging her own tongue Mae continues. “You know a song I’ve only dreamt of last night, you call me by my name and share yours with the lost princess, you― just, why do you make me feel so nostalgic?”

She tries to meet Celica’s eyes in the penumbra but they’re hidden behind the mass of feathers and hair cascading around her face, her mouth a quivering line dipping under her shoulder as she turns further away from Mae.

“Getting too close was a mistake,” Celica mutters in a way that makes Mae’s blood run cold. “I was careless, I’m doing it all over _again_.”

The golden lights are back, dancing in a flurry as Celica’s body begins to glow like a candle flame that’s about to die, and Mae hurries to her feet but it’s already too late, Celica too far away for Mae to snatch her away from whatever it is that’s made her like this.

“Wait, what do you mean again,” she tries to say, scrambled and helpless. “Why won’t you _answer_ me?”

“I’ve never been anything but poison to you,” is all Celica says before disappearing into the night.

 

.

 

“Whew, rewriting the laws of the world does take quite the toll on someone,” Alm says, breezy despite the ragged breaths he can’t quite get to stop. “That’s the power of a divine dragon for you.”

The sun lingers just above the blue line of the zofian sea; it’s been stuck there for the past hour or so.

“You gave up Falchion for this.” Celica’s voice sounds far too calm even to herself, clashing with the thunder storm going on inside of her as she watches the people in the streets freak out because the sun just _won’t go down_ and knows that it was all because of her.

“And you gave up your humanity, so what?”

She whips her head to him and by the Mother would she strike him down here and now if she could muster the strength necessary. “My humanity is nothing! Falchion was the divine weapon bestowed upon humanity by the Queen of dragons herself, it was our _hope_!”

Alm doesn’t look one bit remorseful at that, which Celica doesn’t know whether to find infuriating or alarming, and simply shrugs her anger away.

“The war is already over,” he says like it’s the simplest thing. “And we can always ask this Naga for another tooth or something.”

“That’s blasphemy. That has to be blasphemy, Alm―”

“Celica, listen.” Now Alm sounds serious, far more serious than a kid grown up too soon should ever sound, and she doesn’t have it in herself to push him away when his hands come resting on her arms. “I just want to help you through this and if it means rewriting the world so that you can stay in this form for a little longer then that’s what I’ll do, blasphemy or not.”

Behind them the sun starts to finally sink below the horizon, far too beautiful, far too undeserved.

 

.

 

She finds the tick tocking thing nestled in a secret cavity inside one of the books in the least visited corner of the library. It kind of looks like a clock, all golden and blue, and the cogs shine in a way that seems to lure Mae in. Next to the clock ( _that’s not its right name_ , says a voice inside her mind that she can’t quite refute) there’s a handwritten note: it reads _To Mae, if she ever comes back_ and it’s signed by a certain Silque.

The name makes her want to cry for some reason.

Then the clock-that’s-not-a-clock starts moving in her hands and suddenly Mae isn’t in the library anymore; her feet are sinking into something that looks like muddy acid, except they aren’t really because she feels sort of incorporeal right now, unlike all the other people around her.

It takes her a moment to realize she’s in the middle of a battle, the two parties facing off in the nastiest swamp Mae’s ever seen, even nastier than the saltwater lake with all those stinky, dead shrimps near the beach in Novis where no one ever goes in summer. One of the two sides is unmistakably human but the things they’re facing against look like some creepy parade of ghosts and monsters.

Mae takes a step back, something that looks like a gargoyle screeching above her head as an arrow pierces right through its wings, and it’s then that she sees them. A girl who looks the way Celica would look without her bird-like features and Mae herself, still a teen and wearing robes that seem to belong to several centuries before. They’re fighting side by side, perfect synergy of sword and what looks like archaic magic, the dangerous type that has no mediation in between the caster’s life force and the elements, and it’s hypnotic.

The Celica lookalike isn’t paying proper attention to her left side though and Mae tries to scream, to warn her that there’s a ghost creeping towards her, but before she can even open her mouth her own lookalike shoves Celica away. The ghost runs her through with its sword, blood spilling from her chest, and she sags to the hard ground with a pained gurgle.

All Mae can see before the vision changes is Celica shouting herself hoarse as she cradles the lifeless body in her arms.

Now she’s in some sort of building and there’s a man standing in front of a still human Celica. His skin is purple and everything about him far more inhuman than her own Celica’s ever felt like.

The man’s smiling at this Celica, saying something about a price to pay to bring back the dead and Mae doesn’t like the way his mouth curls in an ugly smirk as he speaks one bit but Celica looks like she’s out of her right mind, eyes wild and exhausted as she nods and shakes the man’s hand in agreement. Mae can recognize the golden lights that immediately start flocking towards her, just like she can recognize the beautiful red bird that’s left in her place once they dissipate.

The man’s own skin is pink now, nothing out of the ordinary in him excluding the fact that he used to look completely different just a few seconds earlier.

The clock― _turnwheel_ , holy gift from Mother Mila herself, now Mae remembers, is cold and perfectly still once Mae’s consciousness finds her way back to her body in the library of the priory, centuries after the events she’s just been shown and absolutely furious.

A look at the sky outside tells her that sunset’s already started and Mae bolts out of the room without thinking about it twice, praying to the gods for Celica to still be there as she ignores the familiar flare in her chest (she knows it’s phantom pain now) and runs to the backyard.

“Princess Celica!” she shouts as loud as she can with how out of air she feels, and starts making her way in between the bushes, trying to catch the telltale rustling. “Celica, please, I remember now so just… Let me see you?”

There will be another moment to feel ashamed by how miserable she sounds, a moment with Celica secured in her arms and Mae’s hands rubbing circles on the small of her back, exorcising whatever’s been eating Celica alive for literal centuries. For now there’s only time for Mae to stick her hands in between branches until she catches sight of a tuft of red feathers.

“There you are…” she murmurs, kneeling down in front of Celica’s curled up form and scooting closer until she can reach out, _finally_ , and pull Celica to herself. She can feel her tense up for a short, dreadful moment, and then relax like she can’t quite manage to struggle anymore. It makes something inside of Mae snap loose.

“You silly, foolish idiot,” she whispers into feathers and hair alike, tears already spilling. Celica laughs weakly.

“Isn’t that a bit redundant?”

Mae manages to get out a _oh, shut it_ in between stifled sobs, and the soft hues of the sun wash over the both of them as they just sit there for a while, until Celica’s stopped shaking like a leaf and Mae feels like she can open her mouth again without any waterworks. She starts singing the song from her dreams out loud then, and the turnwheel starts shining in between her grasp; it grows hotter with every verse but Mae doesn’t stop, not even when Celica herself starts feeling just as scalding against her.

“Mae, what―” Celica’s voice gets cut off by a flash of light intense enough for Mae to feel it even with her eyes closed, but she carries on till the end of the song anyway.

When she opens her eyes again the skin of her palm is pulsating and Celica is staring at her in the same bewilderment as she had the first time they met under the orange tree, only this time her face is human in every little detail and her hair is just hair and her hands and feet look exactly like Mae’s own.

“The curse,” she says. “You broke it.”

Mae throws her arms around her neck.

 

.

 

“Do you feel scared?” Mae dares to ask one day. They’re sitting side by side inside of her family’s fishing boat and the waves rock them back and forth gently.

“About being mortal again,” she clarifies, and Celica turns to her from where she’d been caressing the water with the tips of her fingers. She flashes Mae a smile and Mae feels the tension melt from her shoulders.

“Growing old with you was my greatest, most selfish wish,” Celica says, tanned cheeks turning the faintest shade redder in a way that makes Mae ache to kiss them all over, which is what she does because that’s what second chances are for. Celica giggles in surprise, squirms as Mae plants a kiss right below her ear, and Mae feels so full of _everything_ that she could burst from it.

“I’m glad,” she whispers against Celica’s skin, “‘cause it’s mine, too.”


End file.
